Life on the Edge
by 007Bistromath
Summary: The life story of a minor, throw-away, mid-game quest target who was accidentally made more interesting than any of the player characters. Contains violence, profanity, implied off-screen rape, and drug use.


The young man finally closes his eyes, enveloping his consciousness in pitch black and the distant sound of roaring wind.

"Nobody ever asked me what my story was. I guess I'll just tell it to myself again."

[Eleven years before the Vault opens]

Jed Stokely is eight years old. He's standing around in Marcus' shop at New Haven with his father. He's not really paying attention to what the two men are talking about, but he hears Marcus excitedly claim that something they're talking about is "the newest technology! The cutting edge, I tell you what!" A few minutes later, they leave the store. Jed kicks a rock down the road and asks his father why he's getting another gun, since he's already got so many.

"This one's not for me, boy."

Jed looks up at his father, who is now kneeling down to his level, holding the shiny new rifle out in front of him.

"Now, you listen to me good. This world don't give you nothin', and I can't give you much. I certainly can't really give you a better life. But I can give you this. It's a tool that can help you get what you need and protect what's important to you, if you learn to use it right. I'm gonna try and teach ya how, okay sport?"

[That night]

Jed lays on his cot in his family's rusted out sheet metal shack in the East Commons. He can hear two skags fighting somewhere in the distance, and the sedate call of hanging rakk.

"Please tell me you didn't pay more than five grand for that piece of junk."

"Marcus assures me this is cutting edge technology."

"The same Marcus that sells to the assholes you need to teach Jed to shoot that thing at?"

"Can it. He's a good man. He's done alot for this community."

"Whatever. I just don't see why you couldn't give him one of yours. You've got plenty. Hell, just go get one off a bandit. It'd probably be the same one."

"Just shut your damn mouth. I wanted to get our son something of his own, something that hasn't been dug out of a million skag piles. He deserves something like that for once."

"Well, if you think we can afford it on that fat dirt farming check of yours, I guess that's just fine."

"Just shut your damn mouth."

[Nine years before the Vault opens]

Jed is sitting in the dirt on his father's claim, twiddling the leaves of the meager crops growing there. His father stands nearby, leaning on a pitchfork. They finished working about an hour ago, and are enjoying the silence just before sunset. Suddenly, a terrible din pierces the calm: runner engines.

"Get inside, Jed. Now."

"I'll go get my rifle, dad!"

"Get inside!"

[That night]

"What the hell are we supposed to do with half our crop burned this season?"

"Shoot more skags."

"Really? How perfectly sensible. And what are we supposed to do about money?"

"We've made it through lean times before and we'll do it again. Just leave me the hell alone. I'll provide and protect for this family however I have to."

"Kcch. Seriously? If you could 'provide and protect' for us, this wouldn't have happened in the first place!"

"What do you want me to do? Go pick through garbage near the underpass and wind up dead under a broken washer? I'll be real useful then. "

"I don't understand why we can't just join an outpost with a militia, like New Haven."

"Perfect idea. Signing half our work to that fascist bitch Pierce will make things go so much more smoothly. Get off my nuts, woman."

"If you HAD nuts..."

"I said shut up, cunt!"

[Seven years before the Vault opens]

"Fifty a piece? Are you goddamn insane?"

"Listen, you've got to understand. There's a bunch of treasure hunters coming from off-world lately. God only knows what the hell they're doing here, but here they are, throwing a bunch of money around everywhere... bounty hunters, too, though that makes a bit more sense, at least. I've only got about twenty of these left until my shipment next month. What do you want me to do? If I can't supply these guys, they'll get it somewhere else, and that somewhere else is going to be some interstellar giant that will set up shop here and drive me out of business!"

While Zed is detailing his enviable woes, Jed feels a tingle on the back of his neck and whips his head around. A man with extremely fancy gear strides up to the counter, his shield crackling slightly against Jed's skin. He shoves a pile of cash bigger than Jed's ever seen in his life into the med vendor without looking at it.

"Five."

The vendor dutifully spits out five medkits. While the rich man is putting them in his backpack, he fumbles one and drops it into a puddle of vomit some drunk left last night.

"Oh, dammit."

He picks it up gingerly by one end and wipes it off with a piece of old newspaper laying on the ground. He appears to remain unsatisfied.

"Here kid, you can have this one."

The man tosses the medkit on the ground towards Jed and walks away.

[That night]

"These goddamn off-worlders are fuckin' everything up."

"I really don't care to hear another three hours of you making excuses."

"And I don't care to hear another three hours of you bitching. Fuck this. I'm going out."

[Five years before the Vault opens]

Jed is potting some spiderantlings south of the claim. He doesn't notice the man approaching him.

"Nice shooting."

Jed turns to look at the man. He has really nice boots.

"You looking for work, kid?"

"Isn't everybody?"

"Alright, come with me. You can put in some work for Krom."

[That night]

Jed comes home and leans his rifle against the wall next to his bed. His parents don't seem to notice he's home late, his father watching TV and his mother in their room. He looks again at the wad of cash he just made. Five hundred bucks, and all he had to do was stand around outside some shack for a couple hours. He'll get some new boots with it. He hears his mother come out into the TV room.

"Will you turn that off so I can sleep?"

"Shut up, bitch."

"It's just that you've been working so hard all day sitting in front of that thing and getting drunk. You should take a break."

"Shut up, bitch."

"If you don't care about anything here, why don't you just leave?"

"You're telling me to leave? This is my house, bitch. If you don't like it, you get the fuck out!"

"I think I will. Me and Jed can pack our shit tomorrow."

"You're not taking my son anywhere, bitch!"

"What the fuck do you care? You haven't even..."

Jed hears a sharp smack. His mother screams, and then stomps away.

[Three years before the Vault opens]

"I don't know about this, Mel."

"What are ya scared of, kid? You did just fine last week when we popped that moron who ganked one of our runners."

"No, I'm not scared, just... These people we're goin' after today didn't do anything. They're just minding their business. Why are we taking stuff from 'em?"

Mel sighs.

"Nobody took the time to explain to you how this stuff works, did they?"

"Huh?"

"No, I guess they wouldn't have. Too busy drinkin' and buyin' more shit to drink. Alright, listen up. What's the one thing absolutely everybody on Pandora wants?"

"To be somewhere else."

"Exactly. And I don't really have to tell you how far off a dream that is for most of us. It costs like what... thirty million just to get to the nearest asteroid-mining rest stop shithole and fish truckers' pocket money through glory holes for the next five years to get anywhere else. It's so much that unless you're doing some big business like Marcus, or pinned under some gated community's bullshit fees, you don't even care about money, you just kinda wipe your ass with it and move on, right?"

"What does that have to do with me stealing from a farmer?"

"Everything, kid. Just listen. Now do you know why so many people work for Krom, and look up to him, and will do just about any damn thing he says?"

"Well, I guess he knows how to throw a party."

"Ha! Yeah, that too. That ain't really it though. See, all these farmers and scrap dealers and mercs and mechanics and... ragpickers'n shit, they're all tryin' to get off Pandora same as everybody else. But they never will. How could they? It's just one guy. Their best hope is pretty much to stub their toe on some Eridian bullshit someday, and then they have to deal with two unfortunate circumstances of their birth. One, their neck is straight, so they're never really going to get all that much use out of the things as weapons most of the time. Two, they aren't on the Atlas Board of Trustees, so their only option is to pawn the shit off to Marcus under the table for pennies on the dollar. So, it don't amount to shit anyways."

Mel pauses a moment to take a drag off his cigarette before continuing.

"Now... these guys, they're never gonna get outta here, even if they dig through garbage their whole lives for it. You need alotta people to work together for that. That's what Krom's gang is for."

"What? Krom can get us off planet? Bullshit!"

"Sure as shit he can! Not all at once, mind, but he can. See, we collect all this crap from these guys... and you can't really call it wrong, 'cuz they've got no real use for it, especially if they're in town instead of on their own 'cuz then they're just saving up a fuckton of money to get Ms. Pierce off this rock... and we put it together, and every once in a while when somebody's put in a whole lotta work for Krom, he puts 'em on the next ship out."

"...Why the hell would he do that? Doesn't that mean he has enough money to leave himself?"

"Yeah, of course he does. See, thing is, you wouldn't necessarily know it from the company he keeps, but he's a pretty smart guy, kinda educated. He likes to talk alot about this old-ass Earth religion, nobody cares about it anymore really, but they believed in reincarnation, and they thought that the point of life was to learn to stop reincarnatin' so you could join some kinda cosmic whatever-the-fuck. And they had this word for people who understood that, but who chose to stay on the world to teach other people how to do it, a bodhisattva"

"Wait, so you're telling me Krom sends people off-world instead of himself because he's just an enlightened guy?"

"No, he just likes to talk about it when he's baked. It's pretty obvious to everybody that the real reason he stays behind is because he wants to make enough money off our backs to skip the glory hole portion of the ride. But it doesn't really make a difference. The fact is Krom treats his guys pretty well, and if you put in enough work, you'll get off this rock. Whether that's propelled by rocket fuel or gunpowder is between you and fate, but it's worth loyalty. Krom's been in this business fifteen years now, and in that time he's put about forty son of a bitch assholes on ships out. Who else can say that? Not that Pierce bitch, that's for sure."

"I guess that makes sense, but it still feels weird just stealing stuff from people. They worked hard for it."

"So? Look, kid, they're not gonna get what they deserve for it whether we take it or not. If they live in the middle of nowhere, a pack of skags is just gonna come by some day and eat their whole fuckin' house. And if they live in a town? Shit, that's even stupider. Not only do you have to pay pretty much everything you make into keeping the militia supplied, and the power on, and the rent paid, you have a million and one fuckin' rules... you can't own this, you can't eat that, you can't shoot up the other, you can't fuck your sister, you can't dance if you're wearin' a purple fuckin' hat on a Tuesday... who gives a flyin' fuck? The people who live in towns aren't just going about it the wrong way, they've pretty much given up on it. Pssh. If they can't be bothered to protect what's important to 'em, what's wrong with taking it?"

[That night]

Jed stumbles home and onto his cot. His parents are arguing again, but he doesn't care enough to listen and find out what about this time. What he does care about is when his mother starts screaming. He's hitting her again, and it doesn't sound like he's going to stop. She cries out for help. Fed up, Jed rolls out of bed and grabs his rifle. He stands in the doorway of the common room, leveling it at his father's head. Jed's father turns and sees him standing there.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doin', boy?"

"Protecting what's important to me."

Jed's father shoves his wife down into the chair, grabs his hat, and leaves.

[Two years before the Vault opens]

Jed is riding around in the back of an old truck with terrible shocks with another guy who works for Krom. The other guy has what looks like an insta-health vial full of inky bright blue stuff. He presses it to his arm and squeezes the injector. All his muscles seem to go stiff for a minute, and his eyes go wide, so it looks as though he's straining with every fiber of his being to see a little more. After a minute or so, he comes down, and looks at Jed.

"You ever try this stuff, kid? It's called Sweetness."

The man pulls another vial out of his backpack and rolls it across the bed of the truck to Jed. Jed turns it over in his hands and examines the fluid inside. Milky, scintillating wisps never quite settle in the shocking deep blue within the tube. He looks for a moment at the distortion of his finger through the glass at the empty end before steeling himself and jamming the needle in. As the pain of the injection subsides, he begins to see. He's had eyes all his life, but now he can see. The dust rising up from the plains around them makes turbulent swirls in which he can see each individual particle. Beyond that lie hills with great husks of buildings, ships, and machines, on which he can see at least twelve different shades of rust. Beyond that, canyon and cliffs the color of blood, with deep purple shadows, leading his gaze naturally to the horizon... the sky. The sky can't make up its mind what color it wants to be. The sunset leaves streaks across the open blue, fading into greenish pink, and between those streaks he can make out the stars... so many stars, in which he can make out all manner of constellations he's never seen in any dusty old tome out in the wastes. They sparkle through shafts of sunlight in such a way that he is sure there is a pattern to it, a message just for him, calling him to them, away from here. Just as Jed begins to fully appreciate the show, it is over. Everything falls to a mute, flat grey that makes everything look like it will crumble away. He looks around, and raises his hands to his face in panic. The other man cackles wildly.

"Hey, don't worry, kid. That's just you seeing the real world again. You'll get back to normal in a few minutes, no big deal. Just close your eyes and don't sweat it."

As the man chuckles again, Jed closes his eyes. He can't unsee the terrible grey world, though. It stays in his mind's eye and gives him a terrible headache. But he knows he has to see the stars like that again.

[That night]

Jed trudges into his father's new place in New Haven and curls up on his cot there. He doesn't really care to spend any time with his father, but he cares to have him come over to his mother's place and bitch and moan even less, so he splits his time pretty much evenly between his parents and just ignores his father as much as possible. It's not difficult. He just drinks all the time and complains about the rent.

[One year before the Vault opens]

Jed is sitting at a table in a dimly lit hut in Krom's Canyon. He shakes and shivers, with cold, with pain, with rage. He's had spells of a few days at a time before where he didn't see color, but this time, it's much worse. He can't remember the last time the world wasn't grey. He's managed to get his hands on a few vials of Sweetness, and part of his jittering is the sheer anticipation of seeing the world of light, of color, of that mythical benevolent creator. He takes the first vial in his spasming hand and jams the needle into his arm. The beauty and comfort washes all around him... for about ten seconds. Flat grey. Grey, grey, grey. Another vial... another few seconds. Also, he is short of breath. Another vial... nothing this time. Just... brighter grey. And now he's nauseous. He falls from his chair and pukes all over the floor. He struggles back up, and looks at his last vial. Should he? Fuck it, of course he should. And of course nothing happens. Don't they make this shit any stronger? He looks around him at the grey. He can feel the grey. Pins and needles, all over his body, entering through the grey in his eyes. Disgusting, horrifying, stale grey. He'd cut himself open just to see color...

Jed sees his knife sitting on the table. He takes it in his hand, and points it at his arm. He can't hold it steady at all. He just starts carving. Then all he sees is red. At least it's a color.

When the red clears, he can see what's been carved into his arm. A word. But he doesn't really read it. He notices that it's in color. The whole world is grey, but that word in his arm shows up in vivid crimson, clear as day. He looks around. His rifle isn't grey either. The tent, grey. The ground, grey. Plants, people, skags, skag piles, all grey. Then he notices a couple more things. A little stack of cash discarded on a chair: green. The thin film of residue left in his vials of Sweetness: blue. His arm: red. His rifle: beautiful.

He decides that maybe this is the way he should see the world. He's spent so much time losing himself in the grey, even when it doesn't look grey, that he hardly feels like a real person. Is that Jed? Just a mote of grey in a grey world? Maybe what he's seeing now is what's important to him. How do you know what to protect if you don't know it's important? The Sweetness has something to teach him about life, it seems.

Then he looks at his arm again. He reads the word carved into it.

"Reaver."

[That night]

Reaver comes home. He lays his rifle down next to his cot, and admires its colors for a moment. Before he lays down to sleep, he walks out into the TV room to take a look at his mother.

She's still in color. That, at least, is comforting.

[A week before the Vault opens]

Reaver comes home. He's killed... some number of people today. They didn't matter. Grey like everything else. He looks over his rifle and caresses it affectionately before laying it and himself down for the night. His beautiful, cutting edge rifle, that helps him protect what's important.

He is awakened by the sound of screaming.

"What the hell are you doing here, Shawn?"

"I juss wanneda come see you. Izzat a problem? Juss wanna bury th' hatchet, as' all."

"You missed that chance a good long time ago. You get the hell out of here."

"Sweety don' be like that. You know I still love you, even after all this... bullshit..."

"I don't care. Get out."

"Listen, I'm not gonna go anywhere until we can juss... siddown... be civil... juss wanna make you feel nice..."

"You get your hands off me!"

"Mmmm you smell... good... juss wanna... make you feel... pretty..."

"Leave me alone, you drunk! No!"

Reaver knows he should feel something, but he can't. He goes back to sleep.

[That morning]

Reaver awakes in the dim glow of dawn, and walks into the TV room. It's not on, but his mother is sitting there staring at it. Just staring. Not moving. Not saying a word. Not looking at anything else. Staring at the blank screen, like a statue.

She's grey.

Krom doesn't need anyone killed today, so Reaver was planning on spending the day with his father to placate his sorry ass. That doesn't matter anymore. Nothing does but his rifle and what he earns with it. All he needs is the stars, and the Sweetness that reminds him he's going to be at one of them some day. Once he's off this shithole planet, everything will be colorful.

Reaver arrives at his father's place. He's still sleeping off the booze. Reaver quickly jots down a note, sticks it in his father's journal, and leaves for Krom's Canyon.

A half hour later, an asinine grey blob catches up to him.

"Jed! Jed!"

"I'm not Jed."

"Listen to me, Jed, you can't stay out there..."

"I'm not Jed."

"You'll break your mother's heart, Jed."

"I'M NOT JED!"

Reaver picks his father up by the throat and pins him against the wall of a nearby shack. His next words are each punctuated by slamming his head into it.

"MY... NAME... IS... REAVER!"

The world is completely awash with red. When it clears, Reaver is kneeling over his father's corpse with his knife in his hand. His name, carved into the forehead of that insignificant grey smudge, is red.

[Later that week]

He's been watching them since the sentry sounded the alarm. They're terrifyingly interesting. He's seen some off-worlders before, even killed his share of mercs now and then. They had good looking stuff every now and then, but they were always grey, same as anyone else. These people were different, though. He didn't know why, or what it meant, they just were. A black guy, kind of old for a merc, wearing fancy pieces of Lance armor and shooting everything in sight. A crazed giant, screaming like he could get blood out of the sky if he did it loud enough. A woman who moves faster than he can blink, with hair the color of his own name. A thin man wearing a hood, probably a better shot than he is, and terrorizing everyone with this crazy ass bird. These people mattered. Why?

They were chewing their way towards his end of the canyon, and nobody seemed to be able to do jack shit about it. Sometimes one of them would go down, but one of the others would help him right back up. He'd never seen any of Krom's men do that. They all worked for Krom, but they fought for themselves.

Reaver starts taking potshots at them, but it doesn't really do any good. More of his buddies just keep falling into the maw of these four beasts. One of them spots Reaver at the back of the crowd.

"There he is! Take him out, now!"

He doesn't even know what happened. He's on the ground, and his rifle clatters uselessly in front of him. He can't move. He can barely breathe. Was it the woman? But she was over there... Doesn't matter now. He can't even remember who he is. Jed... Reaver... just words that don't matter. He's on the ground, and he can't move, and he's grey. Everything is grey but those four and his rifle. He makes a futile, feeble grab for it. The black soldier casually walks by and kicks it away from his hand.

"Hey Mordecai, come take a look at this."

The hooded one walks over and picks up the young man's beloved rifle, the piece of cutting edge technology that got him this far, and gives it an appraising look.

"Pfft. Garbage."

He tosses it aside, and the young man watches as it loses its color. The only thing in the world that isn't grey now is them. He takes in their colors as they walk away. The hooded one sidles up next to the giant and slaps him jovially on the back.

"So, Brick... what's your story?"

The young man finally closes his eyes, enveloping his consciousness in pitch black and the distant sound of roaring wind.

"Nobody ever asked me what my story was. I guess I'll just tell it to myself again."


End file.
